"I can't do this." I was adamant. There was no way that I was going on this cruise. Not at this time in my life.
"But Dad." My son Peter was trying to sound so understanding of my predicament. "I know that it's too soon after Mum died, but you need to understand that we have paid for this cruise, and there can be no refunds."
"Surely the cruise line can understand my situation here. They must have provision for refunds on compassionate grounds, surely." I know, I said surely twice in as many sentences, but you've got to understand that I haven't been myself lately.
"They have refunded Mum's fare, but their rules state that they cannot refund yours. Look at it another way, you need to get out of the house for a while, mix with other people, have fun." The sharp look that I gave him over that one stopped him in his tracks. "Okay, so you might not have fun, but you might meet other people who have experienced similar losses to you. They might even be able to help you. What was that you used to tell us when we were kids; 'you'll never know unless you try'? Well Dad, you had better live up to those words. Get out there and try. Go on the cruise, after all it's not going to cost you anything."
Don't you hate it when your kids can think more logically than you? There was a week until the ship sailed, a week for me to either come up with a watertight excuse that will get their money back for them, or psych myself up and go on this damn cruise. "I'll think about it."
"At least that's a start." Julie his wife said as she gave me a hug. I liked her, she reminded me so much of my Sylvia.
"I'm not making any guarantees, mind you." I lapsed into thought. What would Sylvia have done if I'd died and left her with this decision? Would she have had to decide one way or the other, or would she have just agreed with Peter and Julie and gone, regardless of how she felt? That was Sylvia, always agreeing with other people, never rocking the boat. She told me, way back when we were just thinking about getting married, that she would always agree with me in public, but in private she would tell me what she thought, and we'd discuss it. Probably around half the time, when we had disagreed over something, I had to admit that she was right, and change my stance. Once the decision was made, that was the end of the disagreement.
Vee (short for Sylvia) arrived home from Uni. She was lucky that she inherited her grandmother's looks and not mine, she was a real head-turner. "Hi Gramps, how are you getting on, still drowning in your tear soaked pillow?" It was an in joke between us. She told me after her grandmother died. "I've never seen you cry Gramps, not even when you hit your thumb with a hammer, but you need to cry now." She was studying Psychology and knew all about grief. "Don't be afraid to show how you feel, we'll not think any less of you for it. Cry yourself to sleep if you must, it doesn't matter if your pillow gets saturated, it'll dry out. Bottle up your emotions and you'll never find closure."
Closure seems to be the psycho-babble buzz word when it comes to discussing any traumatic incident in your life. You must find closure and get on with it, move on with your life. I hated to tell her this, but when you have gone through as much as Sylvia and I did in our lives together, closure comes slowly. To forget about the bad times, means that you have to push the good times aside to allow those bad times to surface. It is then, and only then, that you can deal with them. It is only after you've dealt with them that the good times have any meaning.
Our fifty years of marriage hadn't all been plain sailing. Life was pretty tough in the beginning, both of us came from working class families and had gained our place in Uni through either a scholarship or cadetship. She was a Teacher while I was a Mining Engineer. My job took me away from home for long spells at a time, and we wrote to each other constantly. She used to correct my spelling and grammar and write comments about the content, such as; 'Your words do not adequately convey your passion. I know that you love me, so how about finding the right words to tell me that.' or, when I got it right; 'your words have made me wet, I can't wait to see you.' That one had me arranging time off and a trip back home, resulting some nine months later in the arrival of our first son Phillip.
I eventually was transferred to our head office and life became much more settled, and we bought our first house. We spent time developing our garden, which included a vegie patch, a composting system that recycled all the kitchen scraps, as well as the prunings and lawn clippings. It might not have won garden prizes, but it was our own touch of paradise, a place where we could experience peace and solitude, and leave the cares of the world behind us.
The kids got involved in the garden as they grew up, each of the boys had his own vegie garden where he grew things of his own choosing, planning ahead to ensure that the crops were appropriate to the season. Gillian, our daughter, chose instead to have a fernery, so I built her one. Her brothers dubbed it the mosquito farm because the mozzies loved the damp and humid environment. She built up a business propagating ferns for the local nursery, so it only seemed natural that she should become a Botanist. She is in her element working in the tropical rainforest of far north Queensland.
Phillip followed me into Mining Engineering and is currently based at Roxby Downs (look it up). Peter followed his mother into teaching and has done his time in a country school and is back in Sydney. Julie is also a teacher, and they have kids, Vee and twins Jason and Emily.
